I was born in a village in the “Zhitomovska” [*, Zhytomyrs'ka?] Oblast [region]. My nationality is Polish, but in my passport I am Ukrainian. My parents were working in the kolkhoz, they were from “Zetomov” [*, Zhytomyr?]. In my family we were seven children. Before the war I lived in very bad conditions. I was at school for eight years, and I was very good at it. There I also learned the German language very well.
About the war I found out very quickly and I was really scared. My brother, who was born in 1926, was drafted into military service and died after he was hurt in his stomach. My father died in 1943 because he got sick in the lung when he was hiding from Germans in the cowshed.
At first, I hid from the Germans. They were taking people born in 1925/1926, so they went after me. I was 17 years old at that time. When the police took me for the first time I ran away, which is why I wasn’t in the same place as the neighbors from my village, but there I had a lot of friends. When they did catch me, I was sent to prison for a week. Relatives were allowed to bring us water, some food and clothes. No one fed us, so we ate our food. I had a coat, but later in winter they took it. I was put in a wagon and sent to "Polgograd" [*], where I stayed for six days. Then they collected people to go to work in Germany.
The trip was horrible, there were no stops and we were in locked cattle wagons, men and women together. We were brought to Germany, to Saalfeld [most likely Saalfeld/Saale in Germany's federal state Thuringia]. When we entered in the station it was New Year and the Germans were partying. With 21 other girls I went by bus to a small village: Lichte. They put us up in barracks with three floor bunk beds, I was in the first. When we were practicing magic to know the future, we burned our toilet. [The prisoners most likely conducted a “spell” that required burning something, which they did in the toilet bowl.]
We were working in a porcelain manufacturing plant on the third floor. There were also other foreigners, from France and elsewhere. They divided us, and I was tasked with making handles for cups. It wasn’t a hard work. Some of the girls were firing the dishes and this work was harder [porcelain is heated to extremely high temperatures in its final production phase]. No one was checking after me, how I was working and they didn’t beat or shout at us. There I had the sign “OST” on my left arm, but I didn't wear it for a long time. In the factory we usually were dancing and singing all the time, it was funny.
My working hours were from 8 am to 5 pm. On Saturdays we were cleaning up and on Sundays we didn’t have to work. Instead, we were showering, had walks in a wood and along a stream near the factories, or we went to the cinema. We had the same holidays as Germans: Christmas, New Year etc. Some times I received postcards from home.
From our group of girls one was chosen and put to work in the kitchen to cook food that we were used to: She was cooking borscht and boiled potatoes, five or six per person. There was enough food and on weekends even more, sometimes meat.
I had long hair before, but I cut it when I was in Germany because that was the fashion in those times. I was very pretty and in Germany, the French Jean was courting me. He proposed to marry me and go to France together, but I refused because I knew that I would never go back home.
When the Germans lost the city of Kharkov, they didn’t allow us to go to the cinema any more, because in front of it hung a newspaper. Not far from our factory there was a crematory in which Germans were burning people. One day they took us there to frighten us. From the pipes was coming out a yellow smoke, it was very scary.
On the 8th of March we had a protest and sewed ourselves red platok [a Russian headscarf] to put on the head.
I was working there for three and a half years. We were set free by Americans. They gave us jackets and I remember that they were chewing gums all the time. We had wooden shoes and we were knocking on the concrete as a sign of protest. [It's not clear when and where exactly this fits into Stanislava Karkach's narrative.]
The Americans put us in big cars, they took me into the cabin and drove us three hundred kilometers to Poland. In the car, one of them gave me a piece of chocolate and after that I drove the car for the first time - that was insane! On the way back, we were able to sell a few things to buy bread.
When I came back from Germany, I moved to Dnepropetrovsk, to work as an accountant. Then I moved to Konstantinovka. Now I am 89 years old and I live with my daughter, one of my two kids. My husband was a pilot.
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